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Three questions on Operation Fast and Furious

**Posted by Phineas

There’s a great article today by Bob Owens at Pajamas Media. Here’s an excerpt:

Whether Operation Fast and Furious was a legitimate law enforcement operation, as the Department of Justice claims, or was part of a plot to impose gun control, it was radically different from all other border gun operations in one crucial way. Operation Fast and Furious was the only border gun operation that was undertaken with the full intention of the straw-purchased guns leaving the control of law enforcement officers and reaching the armories of drug cartel murderers. That fact alone should lead to the impeachment or administrative removal of everyone, from field agents to political appointees and elected officials that knew or should have known about the plot.

But that is only half of the horror story.

Operation Fast and Furious was specifically conceived so that “walked” guns would be recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Their serial numbers would be provided to the ATF by Mexican authorities for tracing. Regardless of motive, the entire operation was premised on weapons being recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and law enforcement agencies are well aware that criminals primarily abandon weapons only after they’ve been used in serious felony crimes such as murder or attempted murder.

Operation Fast and Furious was conceived knowing that Mexican nationals would be sacrificed in significant numbers if the tracing operation had any chance of working.

Operation Fast and Furious allowed more than 2,000 weapons to “walk,” indicating that those in charge of the operation were willing to let thousands of Mexican nationals die in an effort to identify the ringleaders of a cartel’s weapon acquisition team.

The Department of Justice claims that they did this so that they could trace the weapons to higher-ups in the cartels and take down entire gun-smuggling networks. Decent people can disagree on many aspects of crime fighting and the amount of risk we should be willing to absorb to fight crime, but we should all agree that no criminal network is worth sacrificing the lives of hundreds or thousands of victims. Yet that is precisely the way Operation Fast and Furious was designed to work.

Bob then follows up with three questions and explorations of their implications. Read the whole thing.

These are the kinds of questions the press should be asking of the administration. But, just as importantly, these are the kinds of questions we should be peppering our congresscritters and senators with every day, letting them know we want them asked, we want answers, and we will hold them to account for not asking.

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6 thoughts on “Three questions on Operation Fast and Furious”

Eric Holder is either up to his eyebrows or he is completely incompetent. Either way the door should have been hitting his ass on the way out months ago.

Now, remind me again why Alberto Gonzales was forced to resign ? The non-lethal dismissals of nine United States attorneys, while Holder’s actions or inactions have lead to the death of at least one Border Patrol agent and the reported hundreds of deaths of Mexicans.

Perhaps resignation is too light for Mr. Holder. Seppuku is probably in order. Or perhaps, he should be extradited to Mexico.

I have preferred extradition for months, but that’ll happen when Obama has a “Jesus moment” and becomes a true conservative.

And does the phrase “for the greater good” ring a bell with anyone? This is the harmless phrase that’s been floating around the liberal thinking sphere for at least five decades, and describes perfectly their take on the value of all human life, which, in the end, amounts to zero. What amazes me is that conservatives are taken in by it lock, stock and barrel, at least in a lot of cases.

The only “greater good” in any society is that which extends personal freedom.

Fast and Furious planners were supposedly intent on finding the higher echelons of the cartels using this technique. So, I suspect they would approach rescuing a distressed colleague from a deep well by acknowledging they should throw him a rope so he can climb out and then toss the entire coiled rope into the well. Then they would blame him for not climbing out. After all, they threw him a rope.

Another unasked question as far as I know; If there were 2000 weapons involved and if we take $1500. each as an arbitrary, probably low figure, we come up with $3,000,000. Now can just anybody spend huge sums of our money or does the expense have to be authorized by a higher up? Like maybe Holder?

Check with the dealers who sold the guns. Were checks issued or were they paid for with printing press cash?